- Let's take a look at a new feature which gives usthe ability to recover or add some noise,or grain to an out of focus area of an imagewhen we are working with the blur gallery.In order to illustrate how this feature workswe'll be doing a small project here.And with this photograph what I wanna do is,I wanna apply effects so that the boat is in focusand the rest of the image is a blur.Well the first step is to select a layerthat you wanna work with.In this case the default background layeris already selected.

Next navigate to the "Filter" pull down menu.Then we'll go to the "Blur gallery".Here we can choose any of these different options.Yet, to accomplish my projectI'm gonna choose "Iris blur".When we click on that, it will launch the imagein the blur gallery.Over on the right we can see we have Iris blur selected.We can increase the blur amountor decrease it using the slider.Or if you position your cursor over the imageyou can use the onscreen slider right here as well.If you wanna change the shape or the size of the blur,just hover over the edge of the overlay graphic hereand click and drag and you can see howI'm making this smaller.

And if we wanna move it around, just click and dragin order to move it around.And here you can see I can bring the focusinto just one little area of the image.Here, I'll drag it over the boat becausethat's the area that I wanna have in focus.And let me zoom in on this one a little bitso that you can see that touch better.Now what about the solid circles right here?These have to do with the transition area.If they are closer to the edge, it's a harder transition.Closer to the center, it's a softer transition.So what you are looking to do here isjust apply and customize a really funand creative blur effect the photograph.

In this case, bringing all of our emphasisto the boat here and less to the subject,to the person holding it.You know, the blur gallery is so much fun,yet one of the big problems is thatthe blurry area can look a bit too smudgy or soft.So previously, what I would have to do isgo back to Photoshop and add another filterof adding noise to that area,but now we can do this right inside of the blur gallery.We can find those controls underneaththe noise tab down below.If you don't see the controls we'll just click on the tab.We have three different types of noise that we can add.

Let's start off by adding "Gaussian noise".Now when we go to Gaussian, I'm gonna bringthe amount slider up to about 25.And I'm doing this in order to really exaggerate,so that you can start to see whats happening here.And what we see is that there's all of this noisecoming into the out of focus for blurry area of the image.What about color and highlights?We'll bring color up and were gonna seecolors in the noisy area.Bring it down and it's just monochromatic.What about highlights?Well, as I drag this slider down, take a look at the sky.

Notice how the noise effect isn't appliedas strongly to the sky as it is to thedarker areas of the image.So we can use these slider to fine tune or finessethe way that this noise effect will appear.Let's compare gaussian with uniform.With uniform I'm gonna bring this value up to about 25so it's pretty similar.And when I go back an forth between these twoyou can see it's just giving us a different kindacharacteristic of noise.And then again obviously we wouldn't have it this highbut sometimes if you exaggerate,it can help you learn how these new featureslike this work.

Alright well, the last and perhaps the best option is Grain.And the reason why that's the best is becuasewe have access to all of the sliders.Here when we bring our amount up,that brings up the grain, or the noise.Next for the size, we can have really small,drag to the left, or really big, drag to the right.Now what about roughness?If we drag it to the left it's more Uniform.Drag it to the right it's gonna looka little bit more varied.So again we can just fine tune those.And color and highlights worksas it does in the other areas.

Alright well now that we know how these sliders work.How do we actually apply this to a photograph like this?Well, what we would wanna do is,we'd wanna start of with a little bit lower values here,and just bring that amount up.And we're just looking to add a really subtle amountof texture in that area.I'm guessing this is so subtle that you can barely see it.Yet, on my monitor this amount looks really good.I also want you to know that your amountwill really depend upon the resolution of your image.Higher resolution files, you're gonna have a higher amount.But most importantly, just dial the sensorso that looks good to your eye.

And as you do this,you can click on this toggle switch right hereto look at the before and after.So this is gonna show you,"Hey, is this looking good or not?"And then of course you are gonna wanna dial inthe size and roughness.I might bring down the highlights there a little bit too.I'm just gonna try to find just the right amountof texture in that area of the photograph.Alright well, this project is complete.That area looks a lot better, much more realistic.If we are ready to apply this,we'd simply click "OK" and that would thenrender or apply the filter on the layer.

Yet, before I do that, what I wanna dois highlight how this works with theother type of blur tools.So here I'll turn off the option for Iris blurand go down to another option like "Tilt Shift",and with tilt shift we can, again, move the overlay graphicsand change the blur value here.And in doing that we can see thatnow we have this focus on this part of the image.The boat, the person holding it andthe area below and above is out of focus.Again, when I bring up my amount slider,you can see how that noise is just beingapplied to those areas where it has theblur effect applied to it as well.

So this technique or this new feature, working with noise.It works with all of our different blur tools,Field, Iris, Tilt, Path and Spin.And it's a great way to accomplish even morecreative and better results when you are workingwith the blur gallery.And my only tip for you, or my last tip is thatas you start to work with this new featurejust really pay attention to your overall amount.And what I have found is I started toadd this to my images and then make some prints is that,less noise is typically better.

So you don't need to go very highor exaggerate here but justadding a little bit can add a nice mood or feelingin the overall look of your photographs.

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Author

Updated

6/21/2016

Released

6/16/2015

Creative Cloud delivers the latest Photoshop updates right to your computer. This course is designed for photographers who want to begin integrating these new features into their workflows right away. Author Chris Orwig provides a photocentric guide to Photoshop CC 2015 and he'll add new videos every time Adobe releases an update.

To start, Chris shows how to bring back noise with a new addition to the Blur Gallery, find new uses for the Content Aware Move tool, and add adjustments to Smart Objects. He also covers changes to Camera Raw, and selection of smaller but no less important enhancements to both programs.

Skill Level Intermediate

2h 4m

Duration

119,012

Views

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Q: This course was
updated on 12/01/2015. What changed?

A: We added 9 movies
covering the fall 2015 updates to Photoshop CC, including the Diffusion control
for healing, Quick Export, Recent Files workspace, and improvements in Camera
Raw.

Q: This course was updated on 02/05/2016. What changed?

A: We added one new movie, "Boundary Warp for better pano photos."

Q: This course was updated on 03/22/2016. What changed?

A: We updated one movie, "The new dark interface," to reflect changes in the Adobe Camera Raw interface.

Q: This course was updated on 06/21/2016. What changed?

A: We added eight new tutorials to cover the June 2016 updates to Photoshop CC, including Content-Aware Crop, Face-Aware Liquify, and Guided Upright, and a new workspace for selections and masking.

Skills covered in this course

Course Retiring Soon

Photoshop CC 2015 for Photographers: New Features will be retired from the lynda.com library on August 24th, 2018. Training videos and exercise files will no longer be available, but the course will still appear in your course history and certificates of completion.

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